A salute to Penn prof Paul Hendrickson
Back around the time Y2K and the Millennium bug were matters of concern (and when we could unironically Party Like It Was 1999) Washington Post journalist and author Paul Hendrickson stepped into a teaching post at University of Pennsylvania.
After more than 25 years of being the best professor any Penn kid who loved writing could ever have, Hendrickson is retiring. But not to, you know, retire.
His latest book, Fighting the Night, comes out on 7 May. (Buy it. You’ll be glad you did.)
Hendrickson is the apotheosis of the artisan-writer-teacher. Year after year, decade after decade, he gently guided undergraduates away from their predilections for purple prose; he listened, understood, inspired. He also wrote, wrote, wrote.
Per his Penguin Random House author bio:
PAUL HENDRICKSON is a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a winner in 2003 for his book Sons of Mississippi. The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War was a 1996 finalist for the National Book Award. Hemingway’s Boat was a New York Times best seller and also a best seller in the UK. He has been the recipient of writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lyndhurst Foundation, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation. Since 1998, he has been on the faculty of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania, and for two decades before that, he was a staff writer at The Washington Post. He lives with his wife, Cecilia, a retired nurse, outside Philadelphia and in Washington, DC.
So many rich, varied stories tucked into a tidy paragraph.
It was my immense good fortune to be one of Hendrickson’s students. Though I didn’t realize at the time, he was teaching me how to teach as he taught me how to write.
He recently celebrated a birthday so I’d like to take this chance to say — to put in writing — my fondest good wishes and warmest congratulations.
There’s a wonderful Lit Hub piece that previews Fighting the Night. Check it out.